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I'm about a year into astrophotography and have been using a Skywatcher Star Adventurer with a Canon 5D MIII & Sigma 150-600mm telephoto lens. I've gotten my polar alignment down and best have achieved up to 60sec exposures at 400mm. I'm looking to extend my exposure time, and am looking for advice on the right path to take with purchasing an autoguiding scope and camera. I'm planning on mounting it on the hot shoe of the camera so it's always pointing in the right direction.
Over time, I'd like to upgrade my gear to higher quality setup (solid EQ mount, Telescope, CCD, etc), so I'm wondering if anyone has advice on a guide cam & scope that I wouldn't outgrow as I start to improve my other equipment.
I'm looking at the Orion Magnificent Mini Autoguider package since it's affordable but I'm worried of spending less money now, only to have to purchase the "right" guiding package a year or two from now.
BTW, this is my first post, so any and all advice is appreciated!
Below is an example of Andromeda I was able to capture with my current set up.

Taken using Canon 100D DSLR on Skywatcher Star Adventurer mount. Way too much moonlight and LP to allow the necessary settings to bring out the nebulosity. Single 2 minute exposure using 300mm lens. Slightly processed in PS Elements 11.

The Orion constellation taken 14.01.16 using Canon 100D on Skywatcher Star Adventurer. A reworking of my original image using Gimp. Bringing out the detail and colours of the nebula has unfortunately also brightened the LP to the lower half of the image. You can clearly see M42 The Orion Nebula within "the sword", and there is The Flame Nebula and The Horsehead Nebula around the bottom left star of "the belt". You can also see an element of Barnard's Loop which is the red band that curves around the left hand side of the image.

So after messing around for ages and struggling with an EQ2 mount I have finally bought a Skywatcher Star Adventurer astronomy bundle.
I must have made every mod/bodge possible to my EQ2 mount to try and get polar aligned and got some ok results, but after doing a very quick test of my new star adventurer the other night, I could not believe how easy everything is when you have decent gear.
After trying to make sense of the polar alignment method in the manual I decided to download polar finder app for my phone and I was visually polar aligned within minutes. Everything is just so easy from simple things like micro adjustement of the azimuth and easy adjustment of latitude compared to my eq2 mount and the fact that you can look through the centre of the RA axis is just brilliant.
I have only had it 2 days and as I have always read before when people have bought new - you guessed it - The clouds have rolled in. Sorry my apologies for that.
My quick test the other night was on a photo tripod so it was a bit wobbly with the wedge, tracker, counter weight, ball head and DSLR with 300mm lens but I tried 1 minute then 90 secons and finally 2 mins. I noticed very slight trailing at 90 sec and definite trailing at 2 mins. I suspect though that my alignment wasnt perfect as I was kind of rushing because so I just aligned quickly plus it was my first time, so I think I will be able to get much better than this with practice.
My master plan is to use the aluminium tripod that my eq2 mount is on and put it on that. I have ordered a 90mm disc with a hole in it and a 60mm 3/8 unc bolt so I can secure the star tracker from underneath as the tripod for the eq2 mount has an indentation in the top so I cant screw the star adventurer to it yet.
But once I have done it, I will post pictures.
So far I am really impressed with it.
Think I might try and sell my old mount on fleabay and see what I can get and all my other bits and bats that I wont need now, also the barn door tracker that I made. No longer need that now plus dont have the time to finish it now as I have my new tracker to play with
By the way has anybody come up with a good way of attaching the polar illuminator to the L bracket instead of just clipping it on, I can just imagine me dropping and losing that.

I'm looking for some support from other forum members interesting in motor control with encoder feedback to push this little project along ready for the winter season I've just pushed the button on a Skywatcher Star Adventurer astrophotography mount with a view to replacing the electronics with my own control system so it does what I want rather than doing what it thinks I want Looking inside the mount there is a single control board with plug and socket connections to the various components on the mount i.e. the motor/encoder, mode dial, Camera snap port, power switch etc. As supplied the mount works well for astrophotography but is seriously lacking any flexibility or thought when it comes to the timelapse functionality. This project will replace all of the Skywatcher control board including the motor driver and encoder counter, and incorporate a PID controller for position/speed control For me, very basic timelapse functionality would include: 1. Manually define left and right limits for a panning timelapse (fast slew to position camera at start and then finish). Report back defined number of degrees and maybe options to preselect a shoot mode based on frame rate required. 2. Manually select the 'framerate' by entering the total number of frames to shoot while the camera traverses the measured angle in a defined time period. 3. Selection of shot mode, either Move Stop Shoot Move or Shoot on the move. 4. Definable start delay to the imaging sequence. Camera control This should include: 1. User defined shutter durations 2. User defined shoot intervals 3. HDR options, number of frames, only bulb mode maybe with exposures longer than 0.1 seconds for reliability. Potentially an external signal to a dedicated HDR camera controller I already have. 4. Mirror lockup options 5. Camera wake up trigger to handle long start delay For astrophotography I would want 1. Standard Sidereal, lunar and solar rates 2. User definable tracking rates within system limitations 3. Plus the user camera control The 1st step will be to check what control system is in use, I assume PWM and closed loop feedback but need to check that and the nominal motor voltage. The encoder is a 4 wire device so probably power, ground, A & B signals. Once the existing system has been tested, then I'll add an external 9 pin D type connector to the casing to connect my control system into it. I would appreciate any thoughts on the best alternative Motor drive board and encoder counting options from other forum users, arduino maybe? The rest of the project coding is relatively simple once I can accurately control the speed/position of the motor.